I’ve been throwing bits and pieces of time at it for 5 months and it’s nowhere near finished. And those bits and pieces of time are the reason why: it is at once my greatest hope for the future and my red headed stepchild of a project. And that’s not fair to it, me, or the people I’m writing it for.

So for the next two months both Cocktail Hour and Where the Geeks Are will be on hiatus so that I can focus my time and energy. At the end of July I’ll decide if August will be taken off, too.

But that doesn’t mean cobwebs will be gathering here! Think of it like a summer break for your favorite shows. I’m not planning to go the re-run route, but we’ll be subbing in various updates from the cookbook project: maybe a sketch here, an excerpt there, a tip another time–basically whenever I’ve got stuff worth sharing which I’m hoping will be quite often.

And because I’d really love it for my analytics numbers not to bottom out, the bits I post here? Won’t be the same as the ones over at the cookbook site or the other comic. So please keep your subscription to the RSS feed (or start one if you haven’t already) and stop by periodically for news.

And please know that this isn’t an easy decision for me, I’ve been fighting it for more than 2 months because I’m stubborn and didn’t want to admit I can’t do it all.Please hang with me through this–the best is yet to come!

Partially still the fallout of last week’s meltdown, partially due to the pain in my hand (tendonitis in the thumb and not really sure what else is going on just yet) that really kicked in back on the 20th after the sunburn to my wrists and hands. If nothing else, something will update on Thursday even if it’s just pencils! Thanks for bearing with me!

I didn’t post a Cocktail Hour for Wednesday and that wasn’t the biggest fail that happened last night.

Tuesday afternoon I started to feel way more stressed than was called for. On the way home I lost it. I’m a fairly stable person but sometimes I push too hard and down I go. Last night I got pretty far down. I thought, after several hours of questioning all sorts of things from why to wherefore to small cog in the giant wheel of time, that I’d figured out what was bugging me.

I was about half right.

This morning, Wednesday, I got a triple shot of the cosmic cluestick and have an even better idea of what I did wrong.

I didn’t take care of myself.

I don’t mean I failed to eat right or failed basic hygiene standards or anything like that. I failed to take time for myself and got wrapped up in the deadlines and to-do lists that I created so that some They would agree I was doing it right and some other They would acknowledge it.

And last night my mind and the Universe decided to let me know it.

Last night I was heart-sick, today I’m body-sick. Whether the one was the cause or merely a harbinger of the other is anyone’s guess. Probably a little bit of both, to be honest. But I listened, and I hope I really heard it this time because I don’t want to have another night like that.

To that end, things around Random Acts Comics-land are going to be a bit more fluid for the next month or so. I’ve got some housekeeping to do (literally and figuratively) and some shuffling of priorities and some decisions to make regarding my various projects. Nothing’s going away at this time, but I need to approach it all differently, correctly, so that I don’t hit this wall again.

Or be forced to break up with the Internet. Internet and I are BFFs and I’m not ready to give back my half of the friendship necklace.

So I’m going to spend the next few nights attempting to relax (especially the right arm, my drawing arm, it’s sorta on strike and didn’t even want to type this letter), clearing my head and considering my options. Since update days may be sporadic for the month of April, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me on twitter in order not to miss anything.

Because if I don’t do this I risk true and total burnout. And no one else can tell my stories. Other people can tell other stories, but no one can tell mine. And it’s my stories that I want to tell. I draw and write because it makes me smile, it makes me happy. I need to remind myself of that and make sure I proceed with that, and my own mental and physical health, first in mind. The rest will work itself out.